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08 June 2014

Big data, little data, no data: Prof Christine Borgman at VALA

One of the the highlights of this year's VALA conference for me was the opening plenary by Prof Christine Borgman from UCLA. A video of Borgman's full presentation is available via the VALA website (free, but registration required).

Her talk was a preview of her forthcoming book from MIT Press, Big data, little data, no data: scholarship in the networked world. What I liked most about Borgman's talk was how grounded it was in the social realities of research practice, including researcher behaviour, disciplinary subcultures and the importance of private communication as part of scholarly communication. My reaction to her paper at the time (see tweets below) was one of relief that some of the tricky non-technical issues in research data management were getting an airing at a major conference. Highly recommended!